“About Elly is the film that Iran’s Asghar Farhadi made before winning the Best Foreign Language Oscar with A Separation." — Nigel Andrews, Financial Times
Superbly acted, morally challenging, packed with legitimate suspense, this is film-making of a high order.
Screened as part of Autumn Events 2013
About Elly 2009
Darbareye Elly
“About Elly is the film that Iran’s Asghar Farhadi made before winning the Best Foreign Language Oscar with A Separation. Three years old, it is as fresh as paint: paint that hasn’t flaked or faded, paint that daubs a subtly encrypted anti-totalitarian message in the ‘simple’ fresco of its tragic tale. A woman disappears, presumed drowned, during a weekend trip to the Caspian… Her friends – though soon discovered to be barely that – roam the beach, bonding in their distress, wavering between hope and hopelessness… Here is the chatter of panic trying to organise itself. The body is bound to wash up, some say. But is there a body? The virtues that glowed with a scary wattage in A Separation – that incandescent social fable mixed with a mordant jostle of contrasting psyches – are softer here.” — Nigel Andrews, Financial Times